Americans are surprisingly confident about their job security and finances, even in some of the states hit hardest by the pandemic

People are seen walking on Ocean Drive in the entertainment district of Miami Beach on July 20, 2020 in Miami Beach, Florida.Johnny Louis/Getty Images

• LinkedIn has been surveying about 5,000 people every two weeks about their confidence in their finances and employment amid the pandemic.
• According to figures from the social network, monthly workforce confidence and over-the-month changes vary by state and may be influenced by different factors, such as the success of reopening plans within the state.
• Business Insider decided to look at three states that were either at or above the average confidence score, despite also having the most coronavirus cases per 1 million residents in July among the 24 states with available LinkedIn data.

Although coronavirus cases are on the rise in some parts of the country, such as in California and Florida, and millions of Americans are unemployed and filing for unemployment claims, it seems that many people are optimistic about the future of their career and their finances.

LinkedIn has been running a poll during the pandemic surveying about 5,000 people from the US through email every two weeks about their confidence in their "job security, financial well-being and career outlook." Using these questions, they have created a "Workforce Confidence Index" since April.

Overall US confidence is at a score of 31 on a scale of -100 to 100. LinkedIn's article on the May and June indices emphasized the importance of worker and consumer confidence to the broader economy. "When confidence is rising, consumers step up spending for everything from expensive weddings to new homes and cars. Meanwhile, businesses are eager to hire....When confidence weakens, everything goes into reverse, creating hard-to-overcome recessionary pressures," LinkedIn wrote in last month's report.

The following scatter plot shows July's coronavirus cases per 1 million residents and workforce confidence for the 24 states that LinkedIn has sufficient data for.

The three states with the highest per-capita number of COVID-19 cases between July 1 and July 29 among the 24 states LinkedIn looked at — Florida, Arizona, and Georgia — also had average to above-average confidence rankings, and are highlighted in orange on the chart above. LinkedIn's data team told Business Insider there are many factors that could influence the relationship between the number of coronavirus cases and workers' confidence, such as how long states spent in lockdown and political leanings.

We decided to take a closer look at the workforce confidence of the three states with the highest number of per-capita coronavirus cases: